YOUR FRAMEWORKS DON’T WORK FOR THEM

Neither do mine, though.

This issue became obvious during a coaching session. I could see that the woman I was talking to was misunderstanding what my framework was for:

"What are the rules I'm supposed to follow?"

I realized she didn't quite understand what a framework was for. Then I realized I hadn't thought about it accurately either.

She was struggling with prioritization. Almost everything ended up in her “top priority” column.

She already had a prioritization framework, given to her by her boss. One of its criteria was "impact." The problem was that her mind could find impact everywhere.

The framework wasn't helping because it wasn't correcting for how her own mind actually works.

So we started rebuilding it. We changed “impact" to “potential,” then replaced “urgency” with “contribution capability”.

Now, the framework produced a question that worked better for her (not me, and maybe not you, either):

How much potential do I actually see in this work (low to high)? And am I capable of really moving it forward (low to high)?

Her eyes lit up. She was getting her energy back.

She wanted to add “deadlines” as a third criterion, but stopped herself. "If I put deadlines here, I'll just focus on the deadlines.”

That was probably the most important moment.

She was no longer asking what a good prioritization framework should contain. She was thinking about what HER mind would do with it.

So instead of deadlines, we chose “consequences of missed deadlines”. If you miss this deadline, will someone actually get angry? Will nobody particularly care? Are you unsure?

This new 3rd row brought her energy level up another notch. The framework was starting to feel alive and meaningful for her.

She paused, then without looking at me she added another category herself: recovery. If I miss this deadline, can I recover? Am I unsure? Or is it basically unrecoverable?

I started to feel we were doing something more useful than learning or making a framework. She was learning how to help her mind look somewhere it didn't reliably go through willpower alone. The framework gave her a kind of useful crutch. 

A framework can give you rules, steps, or a useful new lens. But none of that matters much if you don't actually use it — and building it around your own mind requires you to notice what reliably pulls your attention off course.

It’s a tool for keeping your attention where you know it needs to go, instead of repeatedly losing the internal battle to important sounding distractions.

If you don’t play a role in generating the framework, it might feel like a pair of over-sized shoes. Sure, you can walk in them. But you probably won’t pull them out of the closet on your own.

And more importantly, once the shoes actually fit your feet, you’re in a much better position to judge for yourself whether they’re taking you where you want to go.